Vehicle article carriers are used in a wide variety of applications to transport a wide variety of articles on an exterior surface of a motor vehicle, such as a car, truck, SUV, etc. Often such vehicle article carrier systems include a pair of side rails that are fixedly mounted to a roof portion of the vehicle, and a pair of cross bars that are coupled between the side rails. The cross bars are used to support articles thereon above an outer body surface of the vehicle. One or more of the cross bars may be adjustable in position along the side rails so that the spacing between the cross bars can be optimized to best suit a particular article being supported on the cross bars.
Some vehicle article carrier systems employ cross bars that have a single side release mechanism. However, these mechanisms are often complex and/or expensive to construct. A single side release mechanism allows the locking components at each end of the cross bar to be simultaneously released from engagement with both of the side rails, when an operator manually engages an actuating or unlocking element at one side of the cross bar. Thus, there is no need for the user to walk around to the opposite side of the vehicle to unlock the other end of the cross bar; both locking mechanisms at opposite ends of the cross bar are simultaneously locked and unlocked from one side of the cross bar.
While such single side release mechanisms used with cross bars in an article carrier system have proven to be effective and to have added significant convenience and ease to the operation and adjustment of the cross bars of a vehicle article carrier system, it would nevertheless be desirable to provide a vehicle article carrier system having a single side releasable cross bar that has a simple, yet robust construction. It would further be desirable to provide a single side releasable cross bar that has a minimum number of independent component parts required for implementing the single side release feature.